


build it bigger than the sun

by zenstrike



Series: you’re lucky that’s what i like [17]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bad Cooking, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Hugging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 10:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16554089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: Shiro can’t cook.





	build it bigger than the sun

**Author's Note:**

> bless my guardian angel, colleen, for being my beta and friend. HEART EYES
> 
> look this is so self-indulgent but it makes me smile so i hope it makes you smile

Keith couldn’t figure out why the smoke detector wasn’t going off, and then he remembered that Shiro had taken the batteries out of it the last time he’d tried to cook. 

Shiro squinted at the pan. Like his eyesight was the problem.

“You suck,” Keith said.

“Why does it look like that?” Shiro muttered, prodding at the chicken chunks with a fork.

“Because you suck.”

“You’re not helping.”

Keith shuffled closer and peered at what could have been their dinner. “Don’t eat that.”

“Food is food.”

“That is  _ not _ food.” Keith looked up at Shiro. Shiro scowled. “Please don’t eat that and die. You’re responsible for me.”

“But  _ why _ is it like—that?”

Keith sighed and took the pan off the heat because it didn’t look like Shiro was going to.

“Don’t tell Adam.”

“Yeah, Shiro. When I see Adam we sit together and I gossip about your bad cooking.”

_ Well. _

Sometimes he did.

“I think I’m cursed,” Shiro mused. He poked at the ruined chicken some more. “Why is this so hard? I’m a grown man. I’ve kept you alive this long.”

“I think we should get rid of the pan,” Keith suggested.

Shiro looked at him. Keith shrunk a little, automatic and cat-like.

“Turning fifteen’s changed you,” Shiro said. “I barely recognize you.”

“Ugh,” Keith replied with feeling.

“Giving up on dinner. On our treasured frying pan—”

“I have never treasured a pan in my life.”

“—and, soon, on me.” Shiro sniffed. “I’ll be left out in the trash with the frying pan. Unimportant. Unloved. Unappreciated.”

“I think you should take a cooking class.”

Shiro reached for his head and Keith ducked out of the way, darting to Shiro’s other side. Shiro scowled down at him.

“How’d last night go?” Keith asked, leaning against the counter and studying the pan with an unpracticed ease. He had seen Adam and Shiro adopt these casual, half-distracted postures and tones—but Keith himself had yet to master it. He was too tense, too curious. Maybe he _ felt _ too much.

(“You’re straightforward,” Shiro had told him once, with affection and understanding.

“You’re an open book,” Adam had clarified. “There’s nothing sneaky about you.”

“I’m not trying to be sneaky!” Keith had protested and Adam had just smiled and Shiro had sighed.)

“Fine,” Shiro said, and yes—there it was. Casual. Easy. Light.

Liar.

“Liar,” Keith said.

“It was fine.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“No,” Shiro said slowly. “I don’t think so.”

Keith thought that there were Reasons for that but he had once written a long list of said reasons and slid it under Shiro’s pillow and Shiro had given him the sternest talking to of his life.

(He had tried something similar on Adam.

“‘Top thirty-seven reasons why you should get back together with Shiro,’” Adam had read and then made Keith sit and listen to each one.

Keith had been mortified.)

He now avoided the topic.

“You’re hopeless,” Keith muttered.

“Say something nice to me. Just one thing.”

“You’re very tall.”

“Thanks, Keith.”

(“‘Shiro is literally the nicest person in the whole world.’ Oh, Keith. That’s adorable. Does Shiro know?”

“Please stop.”)

Keith picked at a spot on the counter.

“Let’s just order in,” Shiro said, pulling out his phone. “What do you want?”

Keith lifted his head. “Pizza?”

They grimaced at each other.

“Okay—Chinese?”

“Maybe not.”

Keith glanced at the pan. “Fried chicken?”

Shiro snorted.

“I’m not kidding! There’s that place that does the fire—”

“Oh, the Volcano Fire Chicken. That stuff’s dangerous.”

“Yes,” Keith said seriously.

Shiro shook his head but he was smiling as he tapped the order in with his thumb. “They always take forever.” Click-click-click, because Shiro never bothered to turn off keyboard sounds, probably because it drove Adam crazy.

“That’s okay. We’ll have time to bury the pan.”

“Ungrateful,” Shiro muttered, squinting at his phone screen. He shrugged. His phone beeped. He slid it onto the counter.

Together, Keith and Shiro looked back at the pan.

“Can I ask you something?” Keith said when Shiro started poking at the chicken chunks again.

“Of course.”

Keith hesitated. He drummed his fingers against the counter and then dropped to his elbows, still looking at the pan. 

“Keith?”

“Are you going to get married?”

Shiro stilled. “I’m not sure,” he said, sounding thoughtful. Keith looked up at him without straightening. “Maybe.”

Shiro had aged in the last six years, more than Keith thought was fair. It showed in his hair, with its shock of white and the speckling gray around his temples that made Shiro shrug at his own reflection. It was there in the scar across his nose, too, still vivid like a burn and something Shiro traced idly with his fingers when he wasn’t paying attention. It was there in his continued weekly sessions with the friendly psychiatrist that Keith had only met a couple of times and in Keith’s sleepy memories of the books he read while waiting for Shiro at Saturday physio appointments.

Right now, though, he looked young, even to Keith who sometimes thought Shiro was strong enough to lift up the whole world. He looked young, and thoughtful, looking straight down at the ruined pan and obviously not seeing it at all. Keith blinked again, and again, and again, imagining that he could capture this image of Shiro behind his eyes—thinking that, maybe, he could be sneaky enough to dash to his backpack and grab his camera and snap a picture before Shiro noticed.

And then Shiro shrugged and looked at him and smiled and Keith pushed off from the counter.

“Guess we’ll find out,” Shiro said lightly and dropped the fork into the pan. “Why?”

Keith shifted restlessly on his feet. “I’ll be eighteen soon, you know.”

Shiro laughed right in his face and Keith thought about pinching him. 

“I’m serious,” Keith insisted, batting Shiro’s hand away when he made another grab for Keith’s head. “I’ll be an adult soon and I’ll be able to look after myself!”

“So I can get married?” Shiro raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

“Yes.” Keith paused, and then with more certainty: “ _ Yes _ . And have kids and start a family and stuff.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “They can call me uncle, I guess.”

But then he looked at Shiro again and something cold ran down his spine and over his arms and Shiro blinked, blinked, blinked at him like Keith had said something strange, or alarming, or—something.

Shiro opened his mouth. Closed it. His phone beeped from its spot on the counter.

“Okay,” Keith tried. “No kids?”

“Keith,” Shiro said, sounding strained. Pained. “ _ You’re _ my family.”

“I know,” Keith grumbled. He wiggled his toes. He tapped at the counter. “I mean— I know.”

“Then  _ why _ —“

“I just mean! Like!” He threw his hands in the air and tried to ignore how he felt suddenly—flushed, and embarrassed, and how Shiro was looking at him with that screwed up expression that usually meant he was sad about something. “Like a real family! You know? With real—babies. And stuff.”

Shiro squinted at him.

Keith shrunk a little.

“Keith,” Shiro said.

“Please don’t do what I think you’re going to do.”

But Shiro was faster, when he wanted to be, and he wrapped his arm tight around Keith and ignored the way Keith protested and squawked and crushed Keith against his chest. When Keith froze, he thought he could hear Shiro’s heart beating: steady and slow.

“Okay, okay,” Keith mumbled, his shoulders slumping.

“You’re my family, kiddo,” Shiro said, and Keith thought about pinching him again. “And even if I do get married or have more children—”

“ _ More _ children—”

“—yeah,  _ more _ children. Even if that happens, you’re still going to be my family and I’m still going to be yours.”

“I know.” Keith huffed and then, with less reluctance than he would admit to, he returned the hug, his hands automatically clutching at the back of Shiro’s shirt, like he was still nine-years-old and still small enough for Shiro to toss over his shoulder. “You don’t have to be alone, alright? That’s all.”

“I’m never alone,” Shiro sighed with more drama than Keith thought was strictly necessary.

Shiro squawked when Keith pinched him and Keith darted away to see if dinner had arrived yet.

 

He answered the phone later.

“Real babies,” Adam said instead of hello.

Keith hung up.

Adam called back and Keith thought about chucking the phone out the window and then Shiro shouted: “Don’t you dare!”

And Keith shouted: “I can’t believe you told him!”

And Shiro shouted some more: “He’s supposed to say comforting, thoughtful things to you!”

And then Keith picked up the phone and said: “Shiro burned dinner so bad I threw out the pan!”

He tossed the phone to Shiro and stormed to his room and ignored Adam’s laughter when Shiro put him on speaker.

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from you are a tourist by death cab for cutie :)


End file.
